Star Wars Fringe Heroes

The Empire has arrived and created a new world order. Before the heroes can thrive in this new paradigm, they have to survive first.

Wookie Jailbreak

7

JUN/10

Mawr’s search for his missing son, Rarrakk has led him to believe he is imprisoned on the mining planet of Berea. Most of the miners on Berea are prisoners held against their will. Mawr is convinced that Rarrakk is a captive slave on the planet and has been making plans to free him.

Complicating these efforts are the new interdicting ship Barricade. It is scheduled to begin patrolling the hyperspace lanes between Derilyn and Berea within a few short weeks. Recently, the PCs infiltrated the Barricade while it was in dry dock in the city of Palpatine on Derilyn. They were able to secretly install a remote kill switch that would disable the interdicting gravity well. It is likely that the Imperial engineers would be able to quickly fix it, so the sabotage would only let them escape once from Barricade.

Mawr decided to speed up his plans and recruited the other PCs for the attempted jailbreak. His plan involved infiltrating the planet of Berea’s support team with Nimble and Keela. Nimble would pose as a medic and gather information from the workers and miners in attempts to find Rarrakk. Keela would pose as a technician and search the base’s computer records for weaknesses to exploit that would do the most damage and cause the most confusion.

Kel-Ra and Pinstripe would pose as bounty hunters who would bring Mawr and Vek-Tor to Berea in attempts to collect a reward. They were aided by the fact that the Imperial supervisor of Berea’s mining facility was offering higher bounties for Mawr and his jedi associate.

Once Keela and Nimble were in place on the planet, the others purchased passage on an Imperial transport from Derilyn to Berea with Mawr and Vek-Tor in binders and in the ship’s brig. When the shipped landed on the mining facility’s landing pad, the two “bounty hunters” and their two “prisoners” walked across the open facility in breath masks and all weather cloaks. As they passed Keela and Nimble, they exchanged knowing nods to signal all was ready. Keela began to disable the transport ship temporarily in preparation for their escape.

Mawr and Vek-Tor were placed in the base’s jail. The cells had three walls and a force field. While waiting, Mawr noticed writing on one of the walls. He looked closer and read the words, “All who wish to enter must NOC.” After discussing with each other, they concluded NOC meant the NOC list. Perhaps the one they found on Kidron.

Kel-Ra and Pinstripe waited for the base’s commandant outside the jail at the break room. The two conferred with Keela. Keela had been busy while waiting for the rest. She had searched the records and could not find Rarrakk. In addition, Nimble had told her that none of the miners had heard of him. Keela finally found data in the station’s protected records that the Commandant had a secret bounty on Rarrakk’s head. The secret bounty was known only to a few bounty hunters and not widely known.

Meanwhile Nimble attempted to convince the guards to allow her to see the prisoners. They refused saying the commandant insisted that no one go in or out until he got to see them first. Nimble continued to attempt to allow them in, while Kel-Ra stealthily snuck past the guards. Kel-Ra informed Mawr of the absence of his son. Mawr informed Kel-Ra of the words and their suspicion of the NOC list connection. In addition to the writing, a data port appeared next to the writing. Kel-Ra then noticed a similar wording and dataport next to the cells on the outside. Kel-Ra resolved to bring the NOC list to the cell.

Suddenly, an Quarren Imperial officer flanked by two guards strode towards the jail. His rank was commander he introduced himself as Commandant Loshak. Noticing Nimble conversing with the guards, he started to dress her down for interfering. Concerned about Kel-Ra, Nimble stalled the commandant long enough for Kel-Ra to sneak out without the Quarren noticing him. Frustrated, Loshak told Nimble that if he ever saw her again, he would shoot her.

He then strode into the jail asked Mawr where the NOC list from Kidron was. Mawr refused defiantly to tell him in Shyriiwook. Loshak threatened Mawr immediately without waiting for a translation, “Where is the datapad?!” Pinstripe interrupted the interrogation by shouting into the jail that they had the prisoners datapads stored on the transport ship. Loshak demanded them immediately, but Pinstripe insisted on payment first.

Begrudgingly, Loshak agreed to deliver payment to the transport where Pinstripe and Kel-Ra would then hand over any and all datapads captured. Loshak, his guards, Pinstripe and Kel-Ra then walked to the transport ship locker. Once a briefcase of Imperial credits was handed over, the two PCs handed over Mawr’s datapad.

Thanks to another distraction by Nimble feigning dropping her luggage, the jail guards were once again distracted while Keela snuck past and into the jail, NOC list in tow. Inserting a data connection into the dataport and into the NOC list caused a piece of the wall to open up. Keela stepped in and the door closed behind her. She found a corridor that led to another secret door that opened up into Mawr and Vek-Tor’s jail cell.

They discovered the passage went below the mining facility. Keela observed that this part of the base was off the energy grid but still had power. She surmised a secret and hidden power source was powering this part of the base.

The sealed door, was overridden by Keela and revealed a hallway with moving laser traps going down and back. They could see another dataport on the opposite end of the hall next to another sealed door. Confidant in his ability with the Force, Vek-Tor surged down the hall with the NOC list.The lasers missed the jedi and he connected the datapad to the dataport. Instantly, the lasers deactivated and the door opened.

Inside was a small mint with carts of coins made out of precious metals. Each coin had the face of a Coynite with the name underneath of Rageus. In addition, blaster rifles lined the walls on racks. In the midst of searching the mint, Keela discovered the mint used a lost method of minting that made hard metals temporarily malleable in a way that used remarkably low amounts of energy. She hurriedly downloaded the schematics to the techniques to her personal datapad for later study.

After retrieving Mawr’s datapad, Loshak determinedly strode back towards the jail. He passed Nimble on her way to the transport and, instead of shooting her, congratulated her on her wise choice of packing up and leaving. Unknown to Loshak and his guards, the three PCs fell in behind them and followed them to the jail.

When they all returned to the jail, they were surprised to see the cell empty.Loshak furiously connected the datapad to the dataport and waited for something, anything to happen. When it didn’t, he dropped the datapad in frustration and dropped the cell force field. He and his guards entered in to the cell and began looking for clues.

Sensing an opening, Pinstripe began to stealthily place explosives around the jail. When he was finished, he turned the force field back on, trapping Loshak and his guards in the jail. Loshak cried out at the betrayal and began to order troops to the jail, when Pinstripe pointed out the explosives and pointed the remote detonator in his hand. Cautiously, Loshak called off the guards.

Pinstripe then began asking questions of Loshak about Rarrakk. Loshak explained that he had been searching for the NOC list for some time. He traced it to the original four who founded Kidron. When he learned of its existence he sent Stormtroopers to retrieve it. They failed thanks to Mawr, the jedi and the other PCs. He was able to determine that Mawr contacted a former mining slave Wookie, Kentacca, that had escaped to Kidron. Loshak offered to free the Wookie’s relative if he would tell him what Mawr wanted. This was how Loshak learned of Rarrakk and decided to use Mawr’s son as bait if he couldn’t find Mawr. Unfortunately, Loshak couldn’t locate him either. Instead he began to spread rumors that he did to agents of Boss Kaggle to get Mawr to come here, presumably with the NOC list.

In the mint, Keela decided they needed a distraction to begin their escape. She activated a preplanned subroutine that would release the slave minors and enable their espace to the landing pad. She had also disabled the transport that the others had come in on, so no one could take off with it without her and the others.

The subroutine immediately opened all jail cells and dropped all force fields, including the one trapping Loshak. Loshak yelled to his guards to attack Pinstripe. Scared, the guards immediately ran out of the jail to avoid getting blown up. Loshak hurriedly followed after them. Once outside the assumed blast radius they stopped to attack the PCs at the break room. Pinstripe, Nimble, and Kel-Ra opened fire on the guards while Loshak ran out of the room yelling orders into his comlink.

Keela, Vek-Tor and Mawr returned to the jail to see the others shooting from the hallway. After quick pleasantries, Mawr stopped to put on his armor and gather his belongings on a nearby interrogation table. He looked at the improperly placed explosives and shook his head concluding that Pinstripe knew nothing about explosives. He returned the blocks to his bag and replaced his found blaster rifle with his upgraded one.

Vek-Tor gathered his things and charged into the fray using the Force to throw guards against each other. Keela explained to the others were the secret passage went. When Pinstripe heard about the mint, he stopped fighting and ran into the passage to bring out the coins. Mawr took his place in the doorway and began to return fire.

Seeing as there was little room for Keela to help, she moved to a nearby communication station. She sliced the system to give her the highest privileges and saw how well her handy work was going. The slaves had escaped and were overrunning the guards on their way to the transports waiting on the surface. The command center was coordinating their response so Keela intercepted their orders and inserted her own to add to the confusion.

She then noticed a ship was urgently trying to contact the flight control and insisiting on landing. She noticed it was quite well armed for a transport but not an Imperial ship. Intrigued, she received the ships hailing without the video. The ship’s captain claimed to be a bounty hunter bringing back prisoners including the Wookie Loshak wanted. Excited, Keela gave him clearance to land. She noted there was a disturbance and that he should take steps to defend himself while waiting for Loshak (the bounty hunter insisted Loshak meet him personally).

When Keela told Mawr of the ship with the Wookie bounty, Mawr flew into a rage. His shots became increasingly deadly until all the guards were dead. When Pinstripe returned with carts full of coins, Mawr and the others left for the bounty hunter’s ship.

They dodged sentries, slaves and droids to get to the newly landed ship. The bounty hunter had an Annihilator droid guarding him. Pinstripe attempted to bluff the guards with coin carts as his reward money. Then the guard spotted Mawr, and he ordered the droid to attack the PCs.

Undaunted, Pinstripe fired at the bounty hunter using the carts as cover. The others concentrated on the droid from behind crates of minerals. Mawr stooped to gather the explosives Pinstripe had used earlier. The ion grenades and detonite were mixed in together so he had to toss the whole block. The blast would be large and would get Pinstripe unless he got out of the way. He tossed it anyway and waited for his friend to make his move.

Pinstripe did just that and used the carts to pin the bounty hunter against his own ship. He and the others fired at the immobile target and killed him.Then Pinstripe moved up the ramp into the ship while the others almost got blasted to death by the huge droid. One Wookie laugh and click of Mawr’s remote later and a large hole appeared in the droid’s hull. The group concentrated the fire on the hole and the droid was soon destroyed.

Mawr raced into the ship to find his son. The others decided to split up with Keela, Vek-Tor and Kel-Ra going back to their transport. Keela enabled the ship and Kel-Ra pushed the former slave out of the pilot’s chair and took off. Nimble moved to the bounty hunter’s old ship and took off. Mawr found his son and one other prisoner in the ship’s hold. He freed the two and hugged his Rarrakk.

When the two ships got into orbit, they flew into a running space battle. Barricade and a flight of TIE fighters were engaging the escaped slaves. Shuttles were boarding a few. None had made the jump to hyperspace thanks to Barricade’s gravity well. Keela smiled wryly and sent the signal to the capital ship to disable the gravity well. Immediately ships began to surge away. Keela calculated their jump and Kel-Ra followed them.

The others felt the need for some Imperial payback and began to engage TIE fighters and shuttles. After a few attack runs, their shields failed and they were forced to jump to hyperspace too.